A former Marin County deputy coroner was sentenced to six months in jail Wednesday in a sexual abuse case that splintered his family and destroyed his law enforcement career.

Darrell Alan Harris, 47, was taken away in handcuffs after Judge Kelly Simmons reluctantly accepted a plea deal she called “completely inadequate.”

“The acts described by the victim are horrific,” Simmons said.

Simmons had shunned the same deal two months ago, but the victim insisted it was the outcome she wanted. She wrote a letter to the judge saying she needed the painful case to end without the additional trauma of testifying in court.

The victim, who is Harris’ biological daughter, also said she has been ostracized by other family members for reporting her allegations.

In her letter, she said Harris abused her “thousands of times,” made her home a “torture chamber” and left her “terrified of him.”

“What would benefit me most would be for this case to be over,” the victim wrote in the letter, which was read in court by prosecutor Yvette Martinez-Shaw.

Martinez-Shaw said the prosecution had no choice but to conform to the victim’s wishes. Without her cooperation, there would be no case and no conviction, Martinez-Shaw said.

Under the negotiated plea, Harris must register as a sex offender for life and can have no contact with his daughter for 10 years. He is also barred from having a gun and cannot work in law enforcement.

If Harris went to trial on the initial charges and lost, he could have faced more than a decade in state prison.

The sentencing played out before a courtroom audience split between supporters of Harris and supporters of the victim. Each camp included members of their family.

“It’s cases like this that really test the system,” said Harris’ lawyer, Douglas Horngrad. “Everyone will walk out of this court unhappy.”

The victim consented to the publication of her familial relationship to Harris.

Harris, who changed his name from Darrell Alan Fowler in 2000, worked as a nurse and then a coroner’s investigator in Alameda County before joining the Marin coroner’s office in 2003. He stayed on after the coroner’s office merged into the sheriff’s office in 2011. In 2015, he was promoted to chief deputy coroner and placed in charge of the division.

The sexual abuse investigation started about a year ago after Harris’ daughter, who was 19 at the time, left home and reported the allegations to another family member.

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The accuser alleged that Harris subjected her to years of molestation beginning when she was in fifth grade. She also alleged that Harris forced her to model clothes for him and dissuaded her from dating peers.

The case was investigated by the Marin County District Attorney’s Office and the Santa Rosa Police Department. Santa Rosa police were asked to participate because Harris, who lived in San Rafael at the time, has a family connection to the San Rafael Police Department and worked closely with Marin law enforcement agencies.

Harris abruptly left work when he learned his arrest was imminent. He went home, took a gun from his safe and headed north, sending suicidal texts to his wife.

“I’m not coming home,” he texted, according to a sentencing report by the probation department. “There is no recovering from this.”

Authorities arrested him in Eureka and returned him to Marin, where he spent several weeks in jail before posting bail.

The prosecution charged Harris with continuous sexual abuse of a child, lewd acts on a minor, oral sex involving a minor, digital penetration of a minor and sexual battery.

Under his plea deal, he was convicted of a lewd act charge. He entered a so-called “West” plea, meaning he does not admit he committed the crime but is not contesting the charge.

Harris was supposed to be sentenced in March, but Judge Simmons suggested the deal was too soft and sent it back to the lawyers for more negotiation. The lawyers resubmitted the same deal based on the victim’s wishes.

The jail sentence is for one year, but most cases are served at 50 percent minus credit for time served. Harris, who spent 24 days in custody after his arrest, was granted 48 days of credit against his sentence.